Stakeholders
A major issue for an organisation of our type is who to involve in any project. This may be glossed over in many commercial approaches on the assumption that it is generally obvious who should be allocated a particular job. Things aren't quite the same in the education world which is why we focus here on involvement rather than simply setting up a team.
Most project methodologies will take you through identifying your key stakeholders, assessing their likely attitudes to the project and designing strategies to keep them on board. In education you ignore this at your peril. There are various approaches to involving stakeholders and you must think carefully about the best approach for your particular circumstances in order to get input from the right people at the right time.
Stakeholder Analysis
It is worth drawing up a list of stakeholders and their possible impact on and attitudes to the project.
To view the JISC infoNet template for Stakeholder Analysis use the following link, Stakeholder analysis template.
It is important that the analysis is shared with colleagues and preferably "signed off" at project sponsor level to ensure that you do not get a "rabbit-out-of-the-hat" stakeholder emerging unexpectedly in the middle of your project. This can de-rail a project.
In drawing up this sort of schedule it sometimes helps to assess the "Potential impact on the Project" heading if you consider the type of involvement various stakeholders have on complex projects. If the project has been set in a strategic context it will follow that most members of the organisation will be seen to some extent as stakeholders exercising some sort of influence or control as follows:
Strategic - Determining the strategy which this system underpins - may sponsor the project
Managerial - Executes managerial control over elements of the system being implemented
Operational - Is involved in operating the system or parts of it
Direct Influence - Is directly affected by outputs of the system but is not engaged in inputting to it.
Indirect Influence - Is only indirectly affected by the system if at all.
This is not an exhaustive list and you can create your own types to help you analyse your own organisation. However it is particularly important for you not to ignore the last two types of stakeholder. Although it could be argued that the last type is not a stakeholder at all, it is a particular characteristic of education organisations that particular interest groups have disproportionate negative power. You need to acknowledge this and devise a management strategy for it. Typically, this often involves large-scale communication exercises just to ensure that people remain "onside". This is another reason why systems implementation in an educational environment is often so complex.
This covers organisational stakeholder analysis but you might ask "What do I do about directly involving people?" There are two basic approaches to this which can be summed up as Representation v Delegation. Both have advantages and drawbacks.
| Approach | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Representation Attempts to take in the full range of views, interest groups and organisational units as part of the full decision making process. Characterised by democratic, committee-type decision-making. |
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| Delegation Delegates responsibility to those identified as being best suited to the job |
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As time is particularly constraining in the education world, with processes and policy moving on rapidly, the JISC infoNet suggested model is to follow a delegation route with a small team of committed subject experts empowered to undertake work on behalf of the wider community. The empowerment aspect is crucial, as is (under either approach) a robust communication strategy, devised in accordance with your stakeholder analysis as outlined above.
A similar selection methodology has been used by the University of Sunderland a key difference being that it adopted a more representational approach to the evaluation team. View the Sunderland Case Study Material.
Whichever approach is most suitable to your organisation, the following key pointers apply:
To ensure a consistent approach, make sure the same people evaluate all of the systems under consideration.
Don't assume that the ability to critically evaluate a system can be taken for granted. The assessors may require some formal training. At the very least they should attend a briefing session where they have the opportunity to ask questions and resolve any differences of perception/approach.
When planning the work allow time for training/briefing and thorough debriefing. Ensure your assessors are aware of the total time commitment required.
If the project is particularly large or complex, it pays to think of your assessors as a project team. There is a vast body of literature on the development of teams. The phases of team development are commonly referred to as Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing (The Tuckman Model). If you need to bring together people from different backgrounds and experience in order to take major important decisions for the organisation, you need to allow some time for them to develop as a group. In small projects, very basic training or a detailed briefing as described above may be all that is required. In more major undertakings, time invested in developing your team will help ensure you make the right decisions.
Ideally the people involved in product assessment will be the same people who are responsible for defining the requirements in the first place. Where the constituencies are different there is again a need for briefing/explanation.
